1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to furniture glides on the bottom end of furniture legs and, more particularly, to a device that securely attaches to an existing furniture glide and provides a new floor engaging surface on the bottom of the device.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Furniture glides are well known in the art for attachment to the bottom end of furniture legs in order to provide a sliding surface that allows the furniture to be easily moved across a floor surface, while also enhancing the appearance of the bottom ends of the furniture legs. Of particular relevance to the present invention are furniture glides that have an upper portion adapted to be attached to the tubular end of a furniture leg and a lower portion that includes a shoe assembly. The shoe assembly has a base slider element held within a crown by a rim or retaining flange. The base slider element is formed of a smooth, low friction material, such as nylon, and includes a relatively flat bottom surface for sliding engagement with the floor. Typically, a ball and socket arrangement is used to pivotally attach the lower portion to the upper portion so that the lower portion is able to move while the upper portion remains fixed to the furniture leg. This pivotal arrangement provides a self-leveling feature that allows the bottom surface of the furniture glides on all of the legs of the furniture item to lie flat and stable on the floor surface. An example of this type of furniture glide is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,010,621 to Bock.
Furniture glides of the type described above are used extensively in both commercial and home environments including, but not limited to, schools, institutions, convention centers, hospitals, government offices, laboratories, household kitchens and home offices. Usually, this type of furniture glide is found on stackable chairs, tables and desks that have metal tubular legs.
In the past, glides with flat bottom nylon sliders have performed satisfactorily on hard floor surfaces that contain asbestos. However, all schools and other institutions have been required to remove any materials that contain asbestos due to serious health concerns. In the school industry, carpeting and asbestos floor tiles have been ruled unsafe and must be removed and replaced with a safe alternative flooring material. Vinyl flooring has been approved as safe and has recently been installed in many schools, and continues to be installed in thousands of school buildings as a replacement to carpeting and asbestos floor tiles as well as in new school building construction. And, while vinyl floors are the number one choice in schools, a serious problem has begun to emerge as a result of the use of the existing furniture glides on vinyl floor surfaces. More particularly, the bottom of the furniture glides is causing serious damage to vinyl floor tiles as a result of dirt, dust and grit accumulating on the bottom surface of the furniture glides. Eventually, the grit becomes embedded in the slider material (e.g. nylon), turning the once smooth slider surface into a blacken abrasive surface. Once this happens, sliding movement of the furniture across the floor results in scratching and marring of the newly installed vinyl floor tiles. This has led to increased labor costs to schools in connection with maintenance of the floors and, particularly, stripping the floors and re-waxing the floors in order to remove unsightly marks and scratches. And, because the problem associated with the floor glides remains unresolved, the newly re-waxed floors become marred and scratched once again and in a short period of time.
In the past, others have proposed solutions to this problem. In particular, the furniture glide in U.S. Pat. No. 6,324,725 to Green provides a stippled bottom surface that displaces grit, dust and debris between the stipples as the furniture item (e.g. a chair) slides across the floor. In one embodiment, Green provides a cap that snaps over the existing furniture glide to provide the stippled bottom surface. However, retrofitting chairs, desks, tables and other furniture items with the Green furniture glide cap or other available products is a time consuming, laborious and a potentially costly task, particularly in a school that may have over 2,000 chairs and desks, with four legs on each chair and each desk, requiring replacement of over 16,000 chair glides in one school alone. And, because removal and replacement of chair glides, including the chair glide disclosed in the patent to Green, requires use of special tools, only the school maintenance personal (i.e. janitors) are able to perform the job. This places the burden of replacing possibly as many as 16,000 or more chair glides, or installation of caps over the existing glides, on one or two janitors in a particular school. These same janitors have a full schedule of normal maintenance duties and, thus, a job such as replacing chair glides or installing caps like the one disclosed in the patent to Green will most likely have to be performed as overtime work. This would require many months of overtime pay at significant expense to the school system. Students, on the other hand, always seem to have a need to tamper with fixtures on the school furniture and will eventually remove anything that will break lose, even the Green furniture glide cap. Accordingly, there remains an urgent need for a satisfactory solution that provides for quick installation without tools and which will withstand abuse and tampering without becoming dislodged.